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Jitters, beauty, and blissed out guitar loop magic all converged on my radio program this week, when Baltimore musician Dustin Wong stopped by for a live set.

Scenes from Dustin's illustrious past include playing guitar in two of my favorite bands of recent years: high-energy spazzers Ponytail and intricate dualing guitar melodists Ecstatic Sunshine. That's one hell of a resume! Amazingly, Dustin's new solo material is equally fantastic as his work in other projects, and it even takes his talent in a new and exciting direction.

Dustin Wong's lovely new album of looped guitar orchestrations is called "Infinite Love: A Square Defining A Circle" (Thrill Jockey); it's a variety pack of sorts guaranteed to earn brownie points with any date, featuring two LPs/CDs entitled "Brother" and "Sister" (which start out the same, but then diverge), plus a DVD.

His performance on my radio show (excerpt below) mirrors the style on "Infinite Love." Layers are added to a simple theme and gradually, pauses are filled with playful harmonies, building a complex and beautiful piece that effortlessly transitions into the next idea. When Dustin performs live, you can almost see a miniature symphony of phantom guitars playing along above his shoulders.

Be sure to catch Dustin live in a city near you -- he's on tour with Avocado Happy Hour and Holy Ghost Party (both of Baltimore), playing everywhere from Vermont to California, and then coming back to the East coast again at the end of November. Tour dates/venues here. Also be sure to check out Dustin's bilingual (English/Japanese) blog. Baltimore music fetishists and those interested in the city's latest "soft music" scene, should swing by Bmore Musically Informed for tons of songs/photos/videos.

The archive of Dustin's full live set on WFMU is available as streaming audio here, along with a short interview.

I try not to repeat myself too often, but after hearing the new Future Islandsalbum, learning their Danzig channeling vocalist was fresh off knee reconstruction surgery (stemming from an injury he sustained while moonlighting as a hype man for the Dan Deacon Ensemble), and hearing that they were hitting the road with new Thrill Jockey labelmates and Baltimore homies Double Dagger, I had to drop them a line. I was then doublely stoked after they asked if Double Dagger could come up as well. We had to make it happen.

Both of these three-pieces go after, destroy and rebuild any kinda label you might want to try to put on them. Future Islands constructs these amazingly pretty, tranced out, intense pop ballads that would move Robert Smith to tears of joyous sadness on the dance floor. Double Dagger somehow manages to whittle down and jam pack every sound you loved form 90’s post hardcore into a two liter bottle of drums & bass power punch, and add in Nolen Strals’s curiously strong vocals and we have an explosive combination that you maybe tempted to compare to Fugazi (but do so at your own risk).

The fact that we actually got these sets recorded was amazing! We thought it would be a good idea to schedule the session at ten a.m. the morning after the New York release party for Future Islands’ new album In Evening Air. Let's just say getting up after a record-setting night for Death by Audio’s bar and then having to fight though an army of cyclists on a five-borough tour did not make for the timeliest arrival... but big ups to both bands for powering though and delivering great performances and big thanks to Dave Mambach for manning the audio controls and making everything sound great and to my boss for letting me come into work an hour late.

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Lord, this one sounded too good to be true when I heard it was in the works a few months back. And it also helps confirm my suspicion that all the stuff on Judge Judy, Maury, Springer, what have you, are totally made up. On Monday's episode of Judge Judy, Teeth Mountain's Kate Levitt accused Jonathan Coward, AKA Shams, of killing her cat by throwing a TV on top of it. The witnesses are Andrew Burt from Teeth Mountain and Narwhalz, who unfortunately doesn't speak much in court but who distinctly refers to Judy as "Mama". For you animal lovers, this story is not true - although Shams does fuck around with dead birds on stage and burn them as part of these...like...satanic rituals or something. I'm not sure if they're dead when he finds them.

Teeth Mountain are on tour right now in the Northeast US, making their way to Mexico in March -- tourdates here. More Teeth Mountain on the FMA here